The Big Rip goes public
8The Big Rip was a new theory on how the universe will end and was put forward by Robert R. Caldwell, Marc Kamionkowski, Nevin N. Weinberg in a paper published in February 2003. New Scientist magazine picked up the story and broke it down in their March 8th publication and I am using that date. Sue me.
Basically before there were two main ideas on how the universe ends:
1. The universe stops expanding and collapse in on itself in a “Big Crunch”
2. The universe keeps expanding and expanding until nothing is near anything and goes cold and dark forever.
The Big Rip takes the second theory and says that the expansion will actually continue and drill down beyond the atomic and into the weird subatomic world and actually rip the very foundations of physical reality apart.
If it does happen it will be something like 22 billion years from now…so start planning.